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                                                                                U.S. CAMPAIGN, Page 30

The Team Behind Bill & Hillary


Though Clinton and his wife have the last word on how the campaign
is run, they rely on an unlikely cadre of strategists who deserve
the credit for getting the candidate's act together

By WALTER SHAPIRO/LA CROSSE -- With reporting by Priscilla
Painton/Little Rock


    For Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Iowa last week became their
own Field of Dreams. A shimmering summer's day was just
beginning its slow fade into dusk as the eight-bus caravan
pulled into Manchester for a carefully orchestrated
"unscheduled" stop. The local Democrats had done their part --
a crowd of nearly 1,000 had been waiting for several hours to
gambol in the limelight. Gore, fast becoming the Ed McMahon of
political warm-up acts, gave his patter-perfect introduction,
complete with the mawkish reminder that Clinton's father died
three months before Clinton was born. Then Clinton clambered up
onto the small outdoor podium for a quick rendition of his stump
speech. Knowing all too well how easily this political magic can
fade, he tried to inoculate himself by warning, "In the next 88
days, those Republicans will try to scare you to death. Clinton
and Gore -- those young fellows -- will go hog wild, and things
will be terrible. For the only way those Republicans can be
elected is to scare you to death."

    Afterward, Clinton worked his way down the rope line,
waving, shaking, touching, posing, always smiling, his blue
dress shirt damp with perspiration, the Secret Service agents
clinging to his belt when he leaned far into the crowd. The
faces of Manchester conveyed the Music Man message that "there's
nothing halfway about the Iowa way to greet you." The mood was
warm and enveloping as Clinton heard each message of
encouragement. "We owe it all to you." "You're doing great."
"You'll be a great President."

    None of this, of course, is conclusive. Friendly crowds
and sunny poll numbers can be a fatal August illusion. But for
now, the mood of the Clinton campaign is a kind of dazed
humility at the wondrous workings of fate. Says campaign manager
David Wilhelm, who originally dreamed up the notion of putting
the Clinton campaign on wheels: "I'd love to be able to say
that we knew it would strike this chord. It just isn't true."

    Hard to remember that at the end of the California primary
in early June, the Clinton campaign was impelled forward by
little more than a grim sense of inevitability. Clinton was
physically drained from the gauntlet of primaries; the
candidate's message of change had been pre-empted by Ross Perot;
and the campaign structure in Little Rock had so many fancy
titles and overlapping responsibilities that decisions had to
be made by consensus -- or not at all.

    Against this backdrop of drift and looming defeat,
Clinton, prodded by his wife Hillary, belatedly realized that
the campaign structure in Little Rock had to be revamped for the
general election. It had become too much a mirror of Clinton's
own personality, particularly his tendency to skirt conflict,
paper over differences and thus tolerate confusion. "He's got
good political instincts, but the problem is that he's so facile
and adroit that people come away thinking they've heard what
they want to hear," says a senior campaign adviser. Hillary does
not have this problem. "She's quicker to clarify and make
decisions than Bill," says Carolyn Staley, a longtime friend of
the candidate's.

    While the public relations effort to mold Hillary into a
traditional my-heart-belongs-to-hubby First Lady means that
campaign insiders are reluctant to publicly acknowledge her
substantive role, her imprint on the staff shake-up seems clear.
With Hillary as the principal guardian of the candidate's body
and mind, it is telling that just before the convention she
propelled the couple's longtime friend Susan Thomases -- a
sometimes confrontational New York City lawyer -- into the
powerful slot of head scheduler. In that role Thomases serves
Hillary's agenda to make sure Clinton's tendency to please
everyone -- to let discussions drag on, to keep on the campaign
trail until he's robotic with fatigue -- does not get the better
of him.

    "One of the reasons she wanted me to do the scheduling is
that she knows I understand that her husband needs sleep and
needs time to think," says Thomases. Until recently, she was the
epicenter for controversy within the campaign, which may explain
why she has received scant public credit for shrewd judgments
like doggedly promoting the bus-tour idea within the Clinton
camp. Top strategist James Carville defends her in these terms:
"The most powerful force in the universe is inertia, and Susan
is the most anti-inertia person I know."

    Clinton himself, as a ranking insider put it, is "the real
manager of this campaign." On the morning after the convention,
Clinton told his top aides that he was restructuring the
operation. The decision stemmed in part from a campaign flare-up
in early June, when several senior staffers complained directly
to the candidate about Thomases' tendency to meddle in areas
like polling that were far outside her formal role as Hillary's
staff director. The ultimate resolution was Thomases' new job
as the campaign's internal Dr. No -- the final authority to
resist demands on Bill Clinton's time. In a larger shift,
campaign chairman Mickey Kantor was in effect kicked upstairs
to handle long-term planning on such contingencies as a
Clinton-Gore transition as well as handholding the egos of
Democratic powers.

    Thus emerged the unlikely trio that now holds day-to-day
responsibility for directing the campaign -- Carville, George
Stephanopoulos and Betsey Wright. Each represents a different
facet of the totality that is Clinton. Carville is the grit, the
guts and the unyielding determination. Stephanopoulos, like the
candidate a Rhodes scholar, mirrors Clinton's thinking and
intuits his likely responses. Wright, Clinton's chief of staff
during most of his years as Arkansas Governor, is the keeper and
the ardent defender of his record.

    Carville and Wright are the dominant agenda-setting forces
at the 7 a.m. staff meeting in the third-floor war room of the
Little Rock headquarters. Even now, the Clinton campaign has an
informality that would make a Republican organizational purist
wince. Wright, in fact, laughingly calls the campaign structure
mystical. To understand the dramatic summer transformation of
Clinton's candidacy from junker to juggernaut, take a closer
look at the triumphant trio in Little Rock:


    THE RAGIN' CAJUN: Carville, 47, is a constant study in
coiled tension; he holds his body Marine-style rigid; his
brooding brow and his closely cropped, sparse hair all convey
the same message as the T shirts and pressed jeans that he
favors: This is not a man to be messed with. As Carville
describes himself: "I walk the edge between being colorful and
controversial."

    Carville was a late bloomer -- a Vietnam-era Marine (who
was never sent to Vietnam); a Louisiana lawyer reluctant to
practice; a political hired gun who moved into the front rank
of Democratic consultants only by masterminding last year's
upset Pennsylvania Senate victory of Harris Wofford. Carville
first met Clinton last summer through another client, Georgia
Governor Zell Miller, and joined the campaign in November.
Carville's first impression of Clinton: "So this is what major
league pitching looks like." But baptism in the big leagues can
be brutal, and so it was for Carville, who field-marshaled
Clinton's give-no-ground-defense against the fusillade of
charges -- ranging from adultery to draft dodging -- that almost
destroyed the candidate before the New Hampshire primary.

    Yet by April, Carville was a little lost. As an admirer
within the Clinton camp puts it: "When James isn't in charge,
he tends to lose interest." It wasn't that Carville loafed, it
was more that he craved a new adrenaline high. As even he
admits, "After the New York primary, I was working, but I didn't
put my helmet back on until after California." Now the first
among equals in the campaign, Carville is the Count of the
Counterpunch, calling the political ploys and postures, the
stratagems and sound bites that make up daily campaign
gamesmanship.

    If Carville is motivated by one principle, it is "Hit 'em
back hard." Nothing better reflects his combative personality
than the inspirational slogans he posts in the war room. On the
central issue of the campaign: THE ECONOMY, STUPID. And on the
need for rapid response: SPEED KILLS -- BUSH. Carville's
ambitions begin and end with politics, for as he says, "I
wouldn't live in a country whose government would have me in
it."


    THE ALTER EGO: Stephanopoulos' influence in the campaign
is no secret -- he is handed over 100 telephone-message slips
a day. But still, as a campaign insider puts it: "Everybody
underestimates him. He looks like he's 14 years old." With a
shock of dark brown hair, a boyish face and an imperturbable,
almost brusque manner, Stephanopoulos, 31, is the ultimate quick
study. Joining the campaign last summer, after being heavily
wooed by Bob Kerrey, Stephanopoulos became Clinton's constant
traveling companion throughout the primaries. His mastery of
Clinton's ideas and his ability to anticipate the candidate's
reactions to any situation is uncanny. Stephanopoulos'
explanation: "He's a great teacher."

    Stephanopoulos was no slouch as a student either. The son
of a dean in the Greek Orthodox Church, he attended Columbia
University, where he won his Rhodes. His career in politics was
precocious. Starting out as a congressional aide, Stephanopoulos
became a deputy communications director for the 1988 Michael
Dukakis campaign, where he banged out the political message of
the day. After the Dukakis debacle, Stephanopoulos almost left
politics for a key job helping run the New York City Public
Library before Congressman Richard Gephardt, now House majority
leader, offered him a top staff position. Recruited last summer,
Stephanopoulos pressed the Clinton campaign hard to get exactly
what he wanted -- the post of communications director.

    A pivotal moment in the campaign came in May, when
Stephanopoulos was detached from Clinton's side to manage the
nerve center in Little Rock. Suddenly, good ideas that had been
kicking around the campaign were carried out. Media adviser
Mandy Grunwald had been arguing for months that Clinton should
do The Arsenio Hall Show. In fact, Clinton's comeback may well
have begun on Arsenio, when the image of Slick Willie gave way
to Saxophone Bill. On a more substantive level, Stephanopoulos
directed the drafting of Clinton's new economic plan, now a
campaign centerpiece. As Robert Shapiro, a ranking Clinton
economic adviser, puts it: "When George says something has to
be done, everyone knows he's speaking for Clinton."


    THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Wright, 48, first met Clinton
when bothwere young liberal idealists working in her native
Texas on the 1972 George McGovern campaign. In the mid-1970s she
gravitated to Washington, where she ran the Women's National
Education Fund, recruiting women candidates for office. After
Clinton was defeated for re-election as Governor in 1980, he
called upon Wright to run his comeback crusade. She accepted
instantly because, as she recalls, "it was always important to
me that strong political feminists have relationships with
strong male politicians. And Bill Clinton has no problem with
strong women."

    Wright's reward from the victorious Clinton: he named her
his chief of staff, a post she held until 1990. Wright, whose
reputation for political toughness belies a far softer interior,
had some lonely years serving as the lightning rod for criticism
of the Governor. In the late 1980s, she confided with a laugh,
"I've made great progress here. When I came in, they hated me
for being a woman. Now they only hate me for being the
Governor's chief of staff." After a stint chairing the Arkansas
Democratic Party, Wright drifted out of politics -- thereby
avoiding the early shakedown months of the Clinton campaign. But
she returned to Little Rock in the spring to run the campaign's
research operation, aggressively defending the Clinton record
from Republican attacks and probing press queries.

    Her rapid rise in the campaign hierarchy -- symbolized by
her new title of deputy campaign chairman -- was not without
political infighting and moments of drama. But her position is
secure because of her deep allegiance to both Clinton and
Hillary. During much of the 1980s, Wright spent half her life
at the Governor's mansion with the Clintons and their daughter
Chelsea. But beyond Wright the loyalist, there is also Wright
the champion archivist: the computerized database on the Clinton
record that she developed allows her to retrieve any crucial
document in minutes.

    When South Carolina's Republican Governor Carroll Campbell
recently criticized Clinton as a typical tax-and-spend liberal,
Wright dug into the files and found a 1989 letter from Campbell
praising his Arkansas colleague, which was gleefully released
to the press. When she hears about a new G.O.P. attack, Wright
is apt to give a rich Texas chuckle, and then say with puckish
enjoyment, "I think I've got something on that. Let me check."
Likely as not, the result is another Clinton gotcha.

    A winning campaign inevitably turns everyone associated
with it into a political genius on a par with F.D.R. mastermind
James Farley, an honor held only as long as the polls stay high.
But the real tests for Carville, Stephanopoulos and Wright will
come with the bruising fall contest. In the meantime, the
campaigners can recline in their bus seats, roar down the
highway and enjoy the cheering throngs. As Wright puts it for
all of them: "I'm going to remember these days when things get
tough."